'Cat's Paw Nebula' Bursting with New Star Growth

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INDIANAPOLIS — A nebula that shines about 5,500 light-years from
Earth could be going through a "baby boom," according to a new
study.

NGC 6334 (the
Cat's Paw Nebula ) might be one of the most productive
star-forming regions in the Milky Way. The nebula is home to tens
of thousands of newly formed stars and plays host to about
200,000 suns' worth of star-creating material.

"NGC 6334 is forming stars at a more rapid pace than
Orion — so rapidly that it appears to be undergoing what
might be called a burst of star formation," the study's lead
author Sarah Willis of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics (CfA) and Iowa State University said in a statement.
"It might resemble a 'mini-starburst,' similar to a scaled-down
version of the spectacular bursts sometimes seen in other
galaxies."

More than 2,000 of the stars in the nebula are very young and are
still trapped inside the "dusty cocoons" that birthed them,
scientists said. Willis presented the new findings here today
(June 5) at the 222nd meeting of the American Astronomical
Society.

Astronomers have observed distant, bright starbursting galaxies
before, but because the Cat's Paw Nebula is a region within the
Milky
Way, scientists can get a better sense of why starburst
regions might form and what they look like closer-up.

"Because NGC 6334 is nearby, astronomers can probe it in much
greater detail, even down to counting the numbers of individual
stars of various types and ages," CfA officials wrote.

Astronomers are still trying to investigate the origin of the
starburst. Some researchers think that a blast from a supernova
explosion or galactic collisions could create starbursts;
however, neither of those explanations appear to explain the
Cat's Paw Nebula's recent activity.